Adobe Teams Up With Inspirational Influencers To Help High School Seniors Showcase Creativity In College Applications
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Sept. 23, 2020 - Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced findings from its latest study-The Deciding Factor: The Case for a More Holistic Measure of Student Success-revealing that students and college admissions professionals overwhelmingly agree that creative skills are a key factor in admissions, yet there is no easy, meaningful way for students to showcase them in the current application process.
Building on Adobe's 2019 Get Hired study-which highlighted how important creative skills like communication, collaboration and creativity had become in the rapidly changing job market-Adobe's new study, The Deciding Factor, surveyed 1,000 high school students, 250 college admissions decision makers and 250 high school college placement counselors in the U.S. to provide synthesized insights on the evolution of college admissions processes and to understand how they have been impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. Key findings include:
Creative skills rank among the top three deciding factors to college admissions decision makers, yet only 20% of those decision makers report that students demonstrate their creativity very well on applications.
Everyone agrees on the importance of demonstrating creative skills in college applications: admissions decision makers (95%), college placement counselors (97%) and high school students (88%).
Yet far fewer students plan to showcase them on applications this year, because they don't know how.
69% of students don't know where to showcase creative skills on their applications
84% of students wish they knew how to show these skills in their applications, and 85% wish they had more ways to show who they are as a person
93% of college placement counselors wish they could give students more guidance on how to show their creative skills in college applications
90% of admissions decision makers believe colleges need a standardized way to evaluate candidates' creative skills
This study illuminates the stark disconnect between the way we prepare students in K-12 and the demands of today's college admissions process, said Mala Sharma, vice president and general manager of Adobe Creative Cloud product marketing and digital media education. I see this as our responsibility to better guide high school students through a crucial moment in their personal and academic development; while also working with the education community and parents to ensure students are equipped with the critical creative skills needed to succeed throughout higher education and in their future workplaces.
Compounding these challenges is the severely limited amount of time college admissions officers have to review each student's application:
Students in the US spend an average of 26,000 hours in their K-12 education, including homework and extracurriculars, and an additional average of 29 hours preparing their college applications and essays. The average time spent reviewing each application by a college admissions professional? 11 minutes.
As uncertainty looms this year, students will need to find creative ways to stand out in those 11 minutes more than ever before. Adobe has partnered with some of today's most creative artists, makers and educators to show students how to showcase their creative skills in their college applications and share who they are in visual, unique ways - where the age-old college essay falls short.
Students can check out tutorials on how to use different creative mediums to tell their story and package it up as supplementary content for their college applications-learning from artist and photographer Matt Crump, comedic chart/graph artist Matt Shirley and high school teachers whose rap videos have gone viral, Audri Williams and Callie Evans. Additional tutorials from designer Steffi Lynn Tsai, #HipHopEd founder and professor Chris Emdin and more will be available in a few weeks.
Creative tutorials for students and educators as well as additional insights from the study can be found here.
About Adobe
Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.
2020 Adobe. All rights reserved. Adobe and the Adobe logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Public Relations Contact
Anais Gragueb
Adobe
[email protected]
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
19/11/2025
Sphere Sound Kicks Up Its Heels at Radio City Music HallUltra-immersive system from the singular Las Vegas venue is also ready for sportsBy Dan Daley, Audio Edi...
19/11/2025
The Future of Stadium and Arena Video Control Rooms: Tech Leaders Talk 4K, IP, a...
19/11/2025
One Year at Intuit Dome: Walking Through the Stunning Arena's Advanced Video...
19/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: IMG's Francois Westcombe Goes Inside IMG's Annual Digital ...
19/11/2025
Inside Brighton & Hove Albion's fan-first media machine By George Bevir
Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 10:10
Print This Story
Brighton & Hove Albion'...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 1: Kansas Athletics Brings New Production Power to Rebu...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 2: A Pro's Guide to Kansas Athletics' New Video...
19/11/2025
MLB Media Rights Shakeup: NBC Inks Three-Year Deal for Sunday Night Baseball, Pe...
19/11/2025
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade attends the premiere of Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theatre on January 26, 2025, in Pa...
19/11/2025
Awards season is heating up, and the International Documentary Association just ...
19/11/2025
Aerojet Rocketdyne President Ken Bedingfield and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders were joined by state and local officials to celebrate the groundbreaking o...
19/11/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
19/11/2025
Calrec gives Phoenix Broadcast Solutions its full support in strategic multi-year enterprise partnership New Singapore OB company invests in Calrec technology f...
19/11/2025
October brings a larger audience in front of TV screens. The cooler autumn weather and the continuation of new programming schedules brought increases in both t...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Vitec has acquired Datapath, a developer of real-time video processing for large-scale video walls, AVoIP content distribution and KVM control in mission-critic...
19/11/2025
NEVADA CITY, Calif. Telestream has introduced ARGUS Version 2.3, which introduces Live Look, a feature that lets operators inspect live and on-demand streams vi...
19/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. and NEW YORK Charter Communications, Inc. has announced a major deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that establishes AWS as one of Charters stra...
19/11/2025
TOKYO Atomos has announced a major firmware update that brings integrated camera control to the Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX its new CFexpress-based monitor-recor...
19/11/2025
Berklee's Signature Series Reimagines the Musical and Visual Artistry of Col...
19/11/2025
PlayBox Neo departed the NAB Show New York 2025 on a high note. The company's all-new PlayBox Neo Suite made a splash on the show floor, drawing strong inte...
19/11/2025
AAVBR (American Audio Visual Baton Rouge), a leading full-service event production company serving Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region, has enhanced its product...
19/11/2025
In its mission to deliver live event services combining advanced engineering with a creative approach to captivating live sports and entertainment experiences, ...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK Short-form vertical video has exploded across platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, but a new survey commissioned by Media.net, a provider of c...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK YES Network, the regional sports network home of the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets, and CAMB.AI have struck a partnership they said will leverage ...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has issued detailed guidance on filings that were disrupted by the government shutdown. While many of those fil...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK The popularity of NFL games is largely responsible for continued seasonal momentum in TV viewership into October (measured Sept. 29-Oct. 26), according...
19/11/2025
DirecTV has announced that its MyFree DirecTV streaming service has added seven new channels. Those include four sports services, NBA FAST, Red Bull TV, DAZN Ri...
19/11/2025
SURREY, U.K. Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) has launched Flair Bridge, a compact device that transforms how operators control the company's motion-contr...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission, which is continuing to rapidly ramp up its operations after the end of the federal government shutdown, has se...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Martin Freeman, Jessie Buckley, Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon, Eddie the Eagle and ...
19/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz collaborates with Broadcom to enable testing and validation of n...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Innato, starring Imanol Arias and Elena Anaya, arrives on Netf...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Guillermo del Toro Sits Down With Troll 2 Director Roar Uthaug...
19/11/2025
Some projects feel monumental from the moment the first phone call comes in. When BCE, the host broadcaster appointed to coordinate the national coverage, asked...
19/11/2025
November 19 2025, 08:00 (PST) BAY AREA HOST COMMITTEE AND DOLBY PARTNER TO DELIVER IMMERSIVE FAN EXPERIENCES
During the Week of Football's Biggest Game...
19/11/2025
Michael D. Higgins: Ireland's Ninth President features RT Archives footage and interviews across seven decades
Watch Wednesday 19 November at 9:35pm on RT...
19/11/2025
Scripps Research scientists receive $1.1 million to advance AI modeling for HIV vaccine development New AI system helps scientists rapidly pinpoint the most pro...
18/11/2025
Independent media across Central America are operating under intensifying financial pressure, yet there is a clear appetite for models that can sustain both ind...
18/11/2025
NBA Debuts New Comms Infrastructure and Systems for RefereesTwo-phase rollout is intended to improve game flow, enhance officiating accuracyBy Dan Daley, Audio ...
18/11/2025
Platinum White Paper: How Aggreko Delivers Certainty For Broadcasters On The Wor...
18/11/2025
Kiswe Extends DTC Products With Kiswe Core Cloud-Based Tool for Distributing Con...
18/11/2025
Spanish Basketball Federation partners with ScorePlay to power digital transform...
18/11/2025
HBS selects BBright encoders and decoders to connect ST 2110 live production wor...
18/11/2025
Ashes to Ashes: Inside TNT Sports' hybrid and maverick' production plan...
18/11/2025
SVG All-Stars: Mimi Fotopoulos, Director, Talent and Production Operations, Tenn...
18/11/2025
SVG LIVE! Conference Explores the Tech Side of Sports and Entertainment ConvergenceLive sports and music productions increasingly share gear and infrastructureB...
Adobe Teams Up With Inspirational Influencers To Help High School Seniors Showcase Creativity In College Applications
